


Daemons

by khilari



Category: Girl Genius
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-09
Updated: 2013-10-02
Packaged: 2017-12-22 22:31:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/918774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/khilari/pseuds/khilari
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Slices of how the characters' lives might have looked if they had daemons.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Agatha's Daemon

Agatha’s eighteen and her daemon hasn’t settled. Lilith says that’s not too old, that it’s fine, but Agatha still feels like Zerreth’s constant changing is the outward mark of whatever is damaged about her. She’s not competent enough to be an adult. Zerreth stays small, a wren, a lizard, a mouse, as if hoping that will draw attention away from him, even as he can’t settle on a form for more than five minutes or hold onto a thought for more than one. It’s only at night he gets bigger, a housecat, a badger, a ferret, still changing but always furry and warm as he and Agatha cuddle together and try to comfort each other for another failure.

*

On Castle Wulfenbach things are somehow different. Sleipnir asks about it, her own little spider monkey gazing at Zerreth curiously, and Agatha shrugs. No, he’s not settled yet. But he’s changing less frequently, now, holding onto thoughts better (so is she). When they go flying he changes to match Gil’s eagle and it’s a while before he shifts to something else.

When they visit the Jägergenerals he suddenly shifts, under the gazes of their ancient wolves, to a huge golden dog and stares them down with dark eyes. The wolves startle Agatha by dropping their gazes, curling up at their Jägers’ feet with sudden contentment, and her daemon can’t explain later what he did or why.

*

When they fight the wasps, charging in to rescue Othar with Gil by Agatha’s side and his daemon flying over her head shrieking at her even as she drives back wasps with her beak, Zerreth takes on the form of a lion and swipes wasps aside with his paws. She’s never seen him so big, so impressive, fur bright as molten gold.

It’s not until later (until she’s kissed Gil, discovered the truth about herself, seen her parents die) that she realises he hasn’t changed. It’s still later, after the airship crash when she’s putting together a death ray marked with a trilobite, that she realises he won’t be changing again.


	2. Anevka's Daemon

Anevka’s daemon settles young, the first time she kills. It worries people when they realise, seeing her still prepubescent with a fully settled daemon, but she likes that (she doesn’t have time to grow up slowly, not in her family). Ariant is perfect as a mink, luxurious fur and vicious, barely hidden teeth, she doesn’t miss his other forms.

It seems like Tarvek’s never going to catch up; his own sweet natured Cassia seems to spend a lot of time hiding in his pocket, or running from Ariant’s teeth. Even when she experiments with being a tiger she still winds up yelping as Ariant bites her tail, huge paw hovering above him for a blow she can’t bring herself to give.

*

When Cassia does settle it’s as a diamondback terrapin, expressionless and cryptic. Now she retreats into her shell at Ariant’s approach and lets him chew fruitlessly on her. Anevka can (she thinks) still manipulate her brother, but she can no longer read him. She’s not entirely sorry when he leaves for Paris.

*

The machine closes around her and she screams at her father with fear and outrage. Ariant is screaming too, darting at her father’s hyena daemon with all his fur on end. Then her father picks him up (they both crumple, screams trailing away into matched hiccuping sobs) and straps him in beside her.

It hurts, more than anything should be able to hurt, and she strains against the straps until her hand bleeds trying to reach out and touch Ariant. But even that comfort is denied them.

*

There is a time, neither waking nor sleeping, as she drifts. When she is more aware she is terrified, trapped, her body refusing to move, and she retreats back into sleep. Then she wakes, properly, and her hands are steel when she looks at them. Tarvek is there, eyes full of tired misery, Cassia on his lap.

Anevka turns, following the tubes from her back to the bed where her body still lies. Ariant is draped over her chest; she lifts him with these new hands and finds him limp and unresisting, breath slow.

‘But I’m awake,’ she says, holding the comatose body of her daemon.

*

Ariant stays in the catafalque with her body when they move around. At times she lifts him out, strokes and holds him, when she is alone, but less often as time passes. Like her body he can no longer move, and the clank she inhabits must serve as a body for both of them. She imagines his voice when she plots, or when she rejoices, and misses him more than her flesh.

*

‘I…I’m _not_ your sister?’

She’s not Anevka, just a clank, just a copy, Anevka died long ago. Tarvek tells her with deliberate cruelty, while Cassia, in her pouch on his belt, stretches her webbed feet towards Anevka as if offering comfort. Anevka cannot move, cannot defend herself either against Tarvek or the knowledge he is giving her.

When he reaches out to deactivate her, her last thought is that it’s a mercy he never gave her time to check the catafalque, to find out whether Ariant had long since dissolved away.


	3. Lars' Daemon

The first time Lars and Lyona see a play she’s stage struck as badly as he is.

‘We could do that,’ she says, jumping back and forth as they head back to the cheese shop and their rooms above it, ears and tail flicking.

‘But they don’t have daemons on stage,’ Lars teases her. The players’ daemons had been hidden behind the backdrop while shadow puppets of the bigger daemons — Bill’s elk, Barry’s horse, Klaus’ albatross — were projected onto it. Lucrezia’s orchid mantis had been a pink broach on the actress’s shoulder. It had been unsettling, at first, seeing people with their daemons hidden in favour of stylised representations of someone else’s, like a new kind of mask.

Lyona turns and looks at him in the light of the lamp over the shop, looking very mulish for a roe deer. ‘I’d be good though.’ She noses at him. ‘ _You’d_ be good. Do you want to stay here for the rest of your life?’

Lars looks through the door, thinks of vats and cheeses, thinks of magic and adventure. ‘I’ll get my clothes.’

*

The first time Lars gets cast as Bill Heterodyne Lyona immediately pokes her nose in to ask if she can play his daemon. Master Payne and his scarlet macaw daemon both regard her thoughtfully. At two and half feet she doesn’t look like an elk, but Lars doesn’t look like Bill Heterodyne. She’s a deer, anyway. They try it out.

Lyona can act, every one of Lars’s reactions feels more convincing with his daemon echoing it. She even remembers to lift her nose to the broach on Pix’s shoulder during the final kiss, the way should would reach out to the daemon of a girl he was flirting with. After that she’s in the show and Lars finds his casting as Bill has become permanent.

*

The first time Lars meets Agatha she’s hiding in a barrel and he helps her out, smiling, Lyona running over to get a look at her. Then a second barrel tips over and a golden beast pours out, so big he wonders how it _got_ in there. Lyona jumps onto the roof of a caravan and Lars and Agatha are both blushing when she introduces the lion as Zerreth, her daemon.

*

When the freaking _horse_ attacks them Lars grabs a brand while Lyona kicks it in the muzzle, both of them yelling for help. After the fight, after Agatha takes it out with a death ray, he and Lyona stagger together, both half collapsed in hysterics. Around them the circus folk talk remedies, the circus daemons fuss at Lyona, and someone manages to hit them both with a pie.

It’s Agatha and Master Payne who steer them to bed, and it’s Agatha and Zerreth who stay when asked, standing between Lars and Lyona and whatever else is out there.

*

When Lars spends time with Agatha (and it’s very pleasant, spending time with Agatha) Zerreth starts out politely keeping his distance and then, as they talk, he starts to drift towards Lyona. She skitters away and Zerreth retreats again, looking embarrassed. The conversation resumes, stilted for a moment, with the daemons back on opposite sides of their humans.

As it picks up again Lyona starts to sneak interested looks at the flowing golden lion, prancing just a little. At least until Zerreth starts drifting again.

*

‘It’s not that I don’t like him,’ Lyona says, curled beside Lars on his bed. ‘But he’s _terrifying_.’

‘I know,’ says Lars. ‘They both are.’


	4. Klaus' Daemon

There’s a moment, savage hunger and hurt and wanting to hurt and aching emptiness, and he’s not thinking about any of those things because he can’t, there’s not enough left of him to do more than act. So he bares his teeth at the woman staring at him and hears her heartbeat jump.

Golden mist coalesces around him, out of him, and a moment later an albatross appears and drops practically into his lap. Her head hunches forward, beak pressing into his forehead as her own small, dark eyes gaze fiercely into his.

‘Kettera,’ the woman (his mother) breathes, voice thick with relief. ‘…Klaus.’

Klaus looks up, blinking as thought comes back to him, and realises that until Kettera was revived she hadn’t known which of her sons she had saved.

*

Klaus sees Bill and Barry for the first time at TPU. Their daemons are an elk and a horse — it’s not a big horse, one of those Icelandic ones that are secretly ponies and can do everything from racing to plowing — but it’s big for a daemon and the elk is legitimately huge. They’re huddled together in the corridor looking deeply apologetic for taking up so much room, or maybe for the way humans and other daemons are giving them and their people a wide berth. Heterodynes. Klaus is planning to do the same.

Kettera flies over and lands on the elk’s back. ‘Hey,’ she says.

Bill and Barry turn as Klaus catches up with his wayward daemon and the relief in their eyes puts a stop to any thoughts of apologising for his daemon’s forwardness and hurrying off.

‘Hello,’ he says, holding out a hand. ‘I’m Klaus Wulfenbach. Pleased to meet you.’

*

The first time Bill and Barry invite him to Mechanicsburg they’re barely inside the gates when the Jägers turn out to meet them. Suddenly there are wolves everywhere and it looks terrible, a horse and an elk being mobbed by wolves, completely surrounded. Kettera darts at them shrieking.

Bill and Barry wave their arms and explain that no, no, it’s fine, the Jägers’ daemons are just a bit enthusiastic. It’s fine. Klaus can see it now, the perked ears and lolling tongues, the happiness.

He and Kettera apologise, but the Jägers are oddly fine with it. Almost approving.

*

They change the world. Or bits of it. Bits of Europe at least. But if it’s less grandiose than people make it sound it’s still more than five people should reasonably be able to manage. (Punch and Judy are introduced, their matching goose daemons shouldn’t be impressive, but Klaus once made the mistake of getting too near a nest of goslings and he remembers.)

They build airships that Kettera loves (her bond with him means she can never fly as high as a real albatross, not until they build things that allow all of them to do so) and they defeat Sparks or talk them down. Kettera gets overlooked, even at three feet tall, beside Bill and Barry’s daemons. At least until the fighting breaks out and she swoops to join it, wings snapping out to all twelve feet of her wingspan.

There are little bits of Europe, now, that are safe. There are times Sparks don’t start a fight because they’d arrive to stop it.

*

Lucrezia and Zuraleina are enemies at first, but such fascinating ones. The beautiful Spark whose fighting is always on the edge of flirting and her orchid mantis daemon, a tiny predator in the shape of a flower.

*

Lucrezia joins them and it’s wonderful (Bill thinks so too).

When she takes Klaus to her bed Zuraleina wanders over Kettera’s feathers, the only way an insect and an albatross can really interact. Klaus wonders, sometimes, whether it would be easier if Kettera was smaller or Zuraleina was bigger. Whether then he’d be able to tell if the mantis was really interested.

*

The last time he sleeps with Lucrezia he wakes in Skifander and Kettera pecks at him for his stupidity (although she hadn’t seen it coming either) shrieking at him and at Lucrezia until warriors find them. He speaks a little Skiff, and there are gestures. They ask him for his name, point.

Kettera nips his ear to stop him from answering and says, ‘Chump.’


	5. Tarvek's Daemon

They meet on Castle Wulfenbach as children, when Tarvek and his daemon go after Gil. Gil is crying and trying to hide it, his daemon a hedgehog curled into a ball. Cassia turns into an otter and tries to nuzzle, even though she gets her nose prickled, and eventually Onorii uncurls to introduce herself and Gil smiles.

*

Fishing for hats their daemons fly around them as seagulls, brown in their juvenile plumage, darting down to catch hats of their own.

*

At night they sleep in the same room, one bed on each side. Their daemons sleep in the centre of the room, curled tight together, and when Tarvek closes his eyes he can feel fur.

*

It breaks so suddenly, Gil glaring at him with hot eyes as the Baron accuses. Onorii sits on Gil’s shoulder as a hawk and her gaze is sharper still. Cassia turns into a mouse and creeps into Tarvek’s pocket, she doesn’t come out until they’re on the airship home.

Neither of them understand.

*

Tarvek wakes between life and death. _Si Vales Valeo_. He’s not dead yet, but Cassia is flickering, golden and translucent, and he holds her tight against his chest feeling cool shell and rough claws suddenly fade to a vague impression and return. When he looks at Gil Onorii is doing the same, flat on his chest with her wings draped, too weak even to perch. He still can’t believe they agreed to this.

*

Agatha pulls him up, shoves something on his head and he feels awful. Cassia flickers out, and even Agatha’s enthusiastic, ‘Yay! it worked!’ can’t stop his heart from thumping in panic. Gil yelling at him hardly registers. He looks around for her, she can’t be gone, he knows what happens to resurrected people whose daemons don’t return and he can still think, she _can’t_ …

There is a dragon curled between him and Gil, who is having the same thing done to him with the same level of enthusiasm. A dragon with scales diamond patterned like Cassia’s shell, and a strong beak and orange eyes like an eagle.

He meets Gil’s eyes and feels three hearts beating.

*

It doesn’t stop them arguing, it doesn’t make anything make _sense_. He’s not sure they can survive this, people or daemons, but at this point the only way is forward.

*

They fight to distract the Castle and he feels every blow he lands on Gil, feels both their hearts racing with anger. It makes it too easy to get carried away, too much, too close.

*

When he revives the dragon is twice as big, gold tinted with a golden mane, and staggering. Gil is unconscious, Agatha buried beneath Lucrezia, Tarvek is the only one it’s connected to who’s awake and he hopes it won’t pull him into sleep while Otilia is attacking.

*

They slide out of Si Vales Valeo, the dragon flickering and starting to break up but not yet there. They pull themselves back _into_ Si Vales Valeo when Gil explains about secondary processes. Tarvek’s never been more tired in his life. The dragon is flat on the floor, shaking with exhaustion, it’s not a good sign. Agatha is making modifications she won’t show anyone and neither is _that_.

He’s grabbed before he has a chance to ask.

*

Agatha floats, crackling with power, beautiful and terrifying. Around her float her machines, and inside that the dragon hovers, wings draped motionless in the air, long body wound about her. She rests one hand on the side of its face and Tarvek feels it, against his cheek, against his palm. Agatha looks at them and it turns with her, eyes glowing identically golden.

They are caught in the storm.

*

They wake with the equipment melted, their daemons whole and singular but curled up together. They stand before their humans do, Zerreth sparing a nuzzle for each of the others as Onorii shakes her wings before flying to Gil.

Tarvek picks up Cassia, relieved at her familiar weight in his arms (still feeling an inexplicable sense of loss).


End file.
